It is a great thing--a very great thing--to be able to save those you
love by dying for them. I well remember sitting in my study at Hobart
one evening, when there came a ring at the bell. A moment later a man
whom I knew intimately was shown in. I had seen him a few weeks earlier,
yet, as I looked upon him that night, I could scarcely believe it was
the same man. He seemed twenty years older; his hair was gray; his face
furrowed and his back bent. I was staggered at the change. He sat down
and burst into tears.
'Oh, my boy, my boy!' he sobbed.
I let him take his time, and, when he had regained his self-possession,
he told me of his son's great sin and shame.
'I have mentioned this to nobody,' he said, 'but I could keep it to
myself no longer. I knew that you would understand.'
And then he broke down again. I can see him now as he sits there,
rocking himself in his agony, and moaning:
'If only I could have died for him! If only I could have died for him!'
But he couldn't! That was the torture of it! I remember how his
heart-broken cry rang in my ears for days; and on the following Sunday
there was only one subject on which I could preach. '_And the king was
much moved, and went up to the chamber over the gate and wept; and as he
went he cried: O my son Absalom! my son, my son Absalom! Would God I had
died for thee, O Absalom, my son, my son!_'
It was the unutterable grief of David, and of my poor friend, that they
could not save those they loved by dying for them. It was the joy of
Sydney Carton that he could! He contrived to enter the Conciergerie;
made his way to Darnay's cell; changed clothes with him; hurried him
forth; and then resigned himself to his fate. Later on, a fellow
prisoner, a little seamstress, approached him. She had known Darnay and
had learned to trust him. She asked if she might ride with him to the
scaffold.
'I am not afraid,' she said, 'but I am little and weak, and, if you will
let me ride with you and hold your hand, it will give me courage!'
As the patient eyes were lifted to his face, he saw a sudden doubt in
them, and then astonishment. She had discovered that he was not Darnay.
'Are you dying for him?' she whispered.
'For him--and his wife and child. Hush! Yes!'
'Oh, you will let me hold your brave hand, stranger?'
'Hush! Yes, my poor sister; to the last!'
Nobody has ever read _A Tale of Two Cities_ without feeling that this
was the moment of Sydney Carton's supreme triumph.
'It is,' he said--and they are the last words in the book--'it is a far,
far better thing that I do than I have ever done!'
He had never tasted a joy to be compared with this. He was able to save
those he loved by dying for them!
_That_ is precisely the joy of the Cross! _That_ was the light that
shone upon the Saviour's path through all the darkness of the world's
first Easter. _That_ is why, when He took the bread and wine--the
emblems of His body about to be broken and His blood about to be
shed--He gave thanks. It is _that_--and that alone--that accounts for
the fact that He entered the Garden of Gethsemane with a song upon His
lips. It was for the joy that was set before Him that He endured the
Cross, despising its shame!
'Death!' He said. 'What of Death? _I am the Life_, not only of Myself,
but of all who place their hands in Mine!
'The Grave! What of the Grave? _I am the Resurrection!_
'_I am the Resurrection and the Life; he that believeth in Me, though he
were dead, yet shall he live; and whosoever liveth and believeth in Me
shall never die._'
He felt that it was a great thing--a very great thing--to be able to
save those He loved by dying for them.